FIRST RECORD OF THE WOLF-EEL, ANARRHICHTHYS OCELLATUS (PISCES: ANARHICHADIDAE), FROM BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO

摘要

The wolf-eel (Anarrhichthys ocellatus Ayres, 1855) is an elongate, benthic perciform that inhabits the temperate North Pacific from the southeastern Bering Sea and eastern Aleutian Islands to southern California (Mecklenburg et al. 2002) and occurs from the intertidalzone (Miller and Lea 1972) to the offshore shelf, up to 244m depth (CAS 19447; see Table 1 for abbreviations). Records from the Sea of Japan (Miller and Lea 1972; Eschmeyer and Herald 1983) are not valid and were most likely based on Anarhichas orientalis Pallas, 1814. The species is one of the early fishes described from California (Ayres 1855a and b) and was characterized as, "In color perhaps no more beautiful fish than this has yet been found in our waters." The original two specimens were taken from "the Bay of San Francisco." The southern limit for the species is off Imperial Beach, San Diego County, but it is not common south of Point Conception (Fitch and Lavenberg 1971). Previously, Barnhart (193 6) noted it to be "one of ourmost remarkable fishes: feeding chiefly on sea-urchins and sand dollars" and gave Redondo as the southern limit; Hubbs and Barnhart (1944) extended this to La Jolla Submarine Canyon, San Diego County.